Climate Change 2026: Faster Warming and Extreme Wildfires in Europe

Over the past decade, global temperatures have climbed roughly 0.35°C per decade, according to a ScienceDaily summary of new research — nearly double the rate seen from 1970 to 2015. Scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research report that the acceleration started to become visible around 2013 or 2014 and grew clearer near 2015, with a statistical certainty exceeding 98 percent across five global temperature data sets. Lead author Stefan Rahmstorf told ScienceDaily that if the recent pace continues, the long-term 1.5°C limit of the Paris Agreement could be exceeded before 2030.

The findings, co-authored by U.S. statistician Grant Foster, were published in Geophysical Research Letters. The researchers removed the effects of natural temperature swings to isolate the long-term warming signal and then tested two different methods. Both approaches supported the same conclusion: the planet is now warming considerably faster than it did during the final decades of the twentieth century. Future emissions of carbon dioxide from coal, oil, and natural gas will largely determine whether that acceleration continues.

That faster warming is already surfacing in extreme weather. In July 2026, large wildfires burned through Spain and France during a heatwave that scientists described as the worst Europe had ever experienced. A rapid analysis by World Weather Attribution found that human-caused climate change made the hot, dry conditions driving Spain's record-breaking inferno at least 20 times more likely, and doubled the likelihood of such extreme fire conditions in France. The group compared present fire weather severity to a world about 1.4°C cooler, close to pre-industrial temperatures, and said warming over the past 26 years has tripled the odds of severe fire risk in Spain and raised them by 40 percent in France.

A separate study by climate scientist Raúl Cordero, published in Scientific Reports, found that Southern Europe now faces about 25 extreme fire weather days each year, up from roughly 10 in earlier decades, and those days are about 50 percent more intense than the 1981-to-2010 baseline. According to PBS News, fire suppression and management had actually reduced burned area across Southern Europe from the 1980s through 2018, but climate change has since overwhelmed that progress. ABC News reported that the fires wore "the fingerprints of the climate crisis," while AP News linked the broader Western U.S. heatwave to climate change driving longer, larger, and more frequent heat and drought.

The Spain and France cases show how the warming trend translates onto the ground. A wet January promoted vegetation growth, followed by a hot, dry summer that dried out grasses and fine fuels. World Weather Attribution described this pattern as "weather whiplash," where wet springs foster abundant plant growth that later becomes tinder. Imperial College climate scientist Friederike Otto told PBS News that as long as fossil fuels keep burning, temperatures will rise and fire weather will keep getting worse.

The research puts numbers on what fire scientists have warned for years. Syracuse University fire expert Jacob Bendix told PBS News that extreme heat and drought are becoming more common because of human-caused climate change, so the general outline of these events is "tragically predictable." University of California Merced fire scientist John Abatzoglou added that climate change is not just a future problem — it is already here.